


A game I think I'll always lose

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Past Spousal Abuse, discussion of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:58:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5198261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eighteen years after Robert took the crown, seventeen since he gave one to Dara, his reign comes to an end.</p><p>Dara, Asric, and her children, in the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A game I think I'll always lose

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The keys to open Paradise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117956) by [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft). 



> A coda to "The keys to open Paradise."
> 
> Probably not as happy an ending as it could have been, but it's better than nothing?

"He is his father's image," Ser Arys says quietly, as the High Septon set a crown of delicately rendered antlers on Robb's dark hair. Ser Arys is standing at Lyarra's shoulder, as he always is, quiet and gentle-natured in a way that most of his sworn brothers are not. "You are much to be praised for raising him so well, Your Grace."

Dara almost laughs at that, because Robb - who truly  _is_ the image of Robert, if a touch slighter, if with a longer face, if _corrupted_ by her Stark blood in a way that pleases her, somewhere small and hard that had come to hate Robert by the end - was raised mostly by nurses and maesters and tutors and masters-at-arms, by the hardships of court and by the cruelties of courtiers who lived in jealousy of the Crown Prince's apparent privileges. Dara did not have nearly so much to do with her children's lives as she would have liked, and she will always regret it.

Perhaps now, she can at least be more involved with Bran and Lyarra. Robb would like that, she thinks. He has always had a kind nature, her eldest boy, far more her brothers than anyone else in his heart. She has always been grateful for that, afraid that he would turn out more like his father than could be countered with discipline and guidance, but she has been blessed in her children, if in nothing else.

It has been so long since she has seen Winterfell. She misses it so.

Robb rises gracefully, not finished growing at seven-and-ten but already towering over the High Septon, who is a Lannister creature who seeks to please Cersei Lannister before any other. Dara mistrusts him, and wishes she had been allowed to show her children more of her gods, but understands the necessity of Robb being crowned in this way. People still whisper that they deserve a better Queen than Dara, that they deserve princes more southron than Robb and Bran, that they deserve a princess with at least a southron  _name,_ not Dara's Lyarra.

Dara would like to bring Lyarra and Bran to see the places where their namesakes rest, to show them that to be Northern is  _not_ the sin that so many denounce it as, but Robert never permitted her to visit the North with the children. Perhaps he believed that she would not have returned from Winterfell, had she been allowed to visit it.

Perhaps he had been right. Had she been allowed to visit Winterfell, with the children, what reason could she have  _possibly_ have had to return? Catelyn's friendship? The ruins of her love for Lord Jon, or what soured, poisoned remnants there remained of her love for Robert?

The familiar creak of Asric's pauldron against his breastplate makes her pinch her lips together to keep from smiling, and she knows that unless she had been allowed to bring him along as her guard, she would have returned. 

Lyarra and Bran are both thrilled to to point of being overwhelmed by Robb's ascension to the throne, thrilled to the point of forgetting the father they loved and feared in equal measure, even if just for a day. Dara would have her babes forget Robert's badness forever, if she could, but also wonders if to do have them do so would be to have them remember only a shade of their father, rather than the man he revealed himself to be during his tenure on the throne. 

Asric's hand brushes against hers for just a moment, the barest touch of his fingertip to the skin between her wristbone and thumb, but it is enough to remind her to brace her shoulders and fix her smile in place. Today is for Robb, for joy and for new beginnings, and she must not lose herself in all that is past.

Robb's smile is brilliant, and reminds her more of her mother than of Robert, and so it is easy to smile for him, easy to accept his arm and lean on him as he emerges into bright noon sunshine to greet the people who are now his. 

 

* * *

 

 

"I wonder, Mama, if I might ask a favour of you," Robb says, some days later. He has taken to spending time every evening with Dara and his brother and sister, time that his  _father_ always used for his whores and his drinking.

He is smiling as he only does when he has some secret or jape, usually planned with Catelyn's quiet son, Jasper, who is his closest friend. What secret plans he might have that involve some favour from her, Dara does not know, but she cannot deny that she wants to give him everything, now - she feels so sorry for her sweet boy, only just seven-and-ten but weighed down with a crown he bears without complaint already - and so she beckons him close.

"What favour can an old woman like me do a fine young king such as yourself, sweetling?" she asks, leaning over the arm of her chair so she can reach over and brush his hair back. She feels so plain beside her children, all so tall and fine, with Robert's lush black hair and storm-bright blue eyes, all as handsome as he had ever been as a boy, as a youth, before the rot of kingship had taken all that was good in him and replaced it with self-interest and greed and grief. 

"My uncle did not come south for my coronation," Robb says, all smiles and sweetness. "I would have you visit him, at Winterfell, and ask him why that is."

Dara knows well why Ben did not journey south - she had it in a letter from him, and Cat had it in a letter from her sister, Lysa, who Ben wed after the war, a precious new child that neither of them had dared to hope for, after all the misfortunes scattered through their joys, due to be born very soon. Robb knows this too, and as understanding dawns on her she can see the joy Robb kept just barely under wraps bubbling over.

"What a wonderful idea," she says, smiling wider than she has since Lyarra was born - for while there is no joy so pure as having a babe of her own placed in her arms for the first time, oh, the joy at the idea of returning to Winterfell is  _fierce._ "And your brother and sister are to accompany me, I presume?"

"If you will have them," Robb says, all smiles as Lyarra and Bran come clattering through the door, their clothes rumpled and their hair all in disarray. Lyarra, as always, comes straight to Dara, climbing into her lap for kisses, but Bran drops to the floor at Robb's feet, all smiles and sweetness. "They have been recommending this course for some time - not necessarily because our uncle did not attend my coronation, but because we know how little you enjoy life here, Mama."

That her darlings think her unhappy horrifies her, because she has always strived to share only happiness with them - they are her greatest joy, near her  _only_ joy, aside from Ben's letters and Cat's friendship - and to think, to  _think_...

"I am happy here," she promises them, gathering Lyarra close so she can free both her hands to reach out to the boys, to wind her fingers through theirs. "I am happy wherever you three are, you know this."

"We do," Bran promises her, truth shining bright in his clever eyes. "We know, Mama, we do, but we know you don't like the city."

"We know how you miss Winterfell," Lyarra chimes in, clasping her hands under her chin. "And we should so desperately like to see it, Mama, we truly would!"

She has filled their heads with so many stories of Winterfell that she does not doubt the truth of their words, but,  _oh,_ but how she wishes she might have been happy enough to hide her grief and longing all these years.

"Well then," she says, "I suppose we must to Winterfell, hadn't we?"

She is torn between laughter and tears when both her boys lift her hands to kiss them, when Lyarra wraps her skinny, bony arms around her neck and kisses her cheek, and settles for both. 

They are her greatest joy, yes, but the source of her greatest pride as well. They are so  _good_ , so free of Robert's unhappy heart, and she cannot help but be fiercely, achingly proud of them, if only because they are so kind.

They remind her of Lya, and of another Bran, and of her mother and father, and of the man Robert might have been.

 

* * *

 

The road to Winterfell is longer than she remembers, but Dara finds that she does not mind - Bran and Lyarra are happier than she has ever known them to be, and as for her escort, well, she supposes that she could have been burdened with worse.

Asric's hair has held its colour, even twenty years since first she saw him, but for a few strands of milkglass white scattered here and there, near his temples. Dara's own hair is near half-and-half brown and steely grey, something which Robert sometimes mocked her for when he was deep in his cups, as though his own hair was not as mixed of colour as a storm cloud.

"Your hair is perfectly lovely as it is," Asric says quietly, smiling just a little as Lyarra sleeps against his chest. His arm is firm around her waist, and every so often he reaches up to tip her little head back, to spare her neck the strain. "Stop fretting, sweetling."

He has been freer with his little shows of affection since they passed the Neck, where Howland slipped into their camp like a shadow in the night, appearing beside her at the fire before any of her guards noticed - save for Asric, of course, who had been at Dara's other side, sharing tales of Starfall with Lyarra and Bran, and who had nodded in greeting to Howland before he had even stepped fully into the light of their fire. 

He is never far from her side now. His little finger brushing the skin between her thumb and her wristbone, his hand warm against the small of her back when she stumbles, legs numb from too long in the saddle, Lyarra gathered in his arms so Dara can support Bran. 

"How did you know I was fretting?" she asks over her shoulder, hoping he will ascribe her blushing cheeks to the cold wind whipping under all their hoods. Bran, on his neat grey colt, a little ways away from her, has wrapped his scarf over his face, but Dara finds herself relishing the cold. The air below the Neck is always at least a little humid, even by the sea, or achingly dry and hot, as it was so long ago in Dorne, but here, it is fresh and clean. 

It is home, something she has denied for so many years so she might make peace with the life she was given, and how  _good_ it feels to return here.

"You always play with your plait when you're fretting about it," Asric says, his smile widening slightly. "And you frown, the way you do when you fear Robb and young Lord Jasper are finding trouble again."

The familiarity Asric shows toward her children warms her heart, and it thrills her that he can be so familiar here without fear of censure - Lord Jon more than anyone had taken ill to Asric referring to the children by their names, insisting that it was improper for him to call Robb and Bran anything other than  _Your Highness_ on the training yard, to call Lyarra anything less than _my lady_ when helping her learn to ride.

Robert had never minded it much, but then, there was little Robert had minded either way in how their children were treated. 

Here, though, Dara is the highest authority, followed by the children themselves, and they love Asric as much as they do Catelyn, and so they hardly even notice when he calls them by name. Dara will never chastise him for such a thing, especially not when it draws his rare, true smiles to be close to the children.

She wonders how much of his heart belongs to her, how much to his vows, and how much to her children. More to the children than the other two, she suspects, and somehow, that brings her close to tears.

She had thought, once, in a faraway tower in Dorne while her sister lay dying and her nephew spent his first moments in the world, that her children's hair might be violet rather than blue, their hair the glossy black of a raven's wing or the pale blonde of starlight, that they might play in the clear waters of the Torentine estuary, in Starfall's shadow, and she knows that Asric had thought it, too.

Perhaps that is why he is so gentle, so attentive to the children - dreams lost are more potent than anything, Dara spent long enough wed to Robert to know that better than most.

 

* * *

 

 

Winterfell is utterly as she remembers, and it breaks her heart to see it.

Asric presses his hand over hers on the reins, a greater show of public affection than he has dared even on the road, but one for which she is deeply grateful. 

The children gallop on ahead on their ponies, Ser Arys and half a dozen men in black-and-gold chequy cloaks following after them, but Dara can hardly keep her seat.

"Come, Your Grace," Asric says gently. "Let us greet your brother - I look forward to seeing if he has grown into his shoulders. They seemed so overlarge on him, at Harrenhall."

Ben runs forward to greet her, pulling her down into his arms, and she weeps openly to finally be reunited with him.

"Oh,  _Dara!"_ he exclaims, holding her so tight she can hardly breathe, but she does not care - her little Benjy is fully a man grown, with strong shoulders and a  _beard,_ as heavy a beard as Father used wear after Mother's death, and before she knows it she is sobbing into his shoulder.

She is home, she is  _home,_ and the children are laughing in delight to meet their cousins and Lysa Tully is wittering in a way alien to Dara's knowledge of Catelyn over how lovely Bran and Lyarra are, and Ben is  _so like Father_ that it aches, oh, it aches and she hates how much she has  _missed._

 

* * *

 

 

Before the feast to welcome her and the children that night, Asric knocks on the door of the bedchamber she has been given - the finest of the guestchambers, and she knows well that Lady Lysa means no harm by it but Dara had assumed that she would be in... In her old rooms. In  _her_ rooms, the same rooms Ben had tip-toed into after nightmares, where she and Lya had giggled over boys and gowns, where Bran... 

"I thought, my lady," Asric says quietly, when she lets him into the room and has returned to her seat at the dressing table, "that you might like to visit the crypts."

She had not wanted to ask Ben, but yes, oh, she does so want to visit the crypts, to pay her respects to Father and Bran and Lya, and yet she is afraid of how she might take it, to see their likenesses rendered in cold, unyielding stone.

"I shall be with you all the while," he promises her, crouching at her feet. "Dara, I know how much this means to you - please, sweetling, let me help you in this. Have I not supported you through all your difficulties, all these years?"

"Every single one of them," she assures him, touching her fingertips to his face. It has been so long since they have truly had any privacy, so long since they've had even the smallest of moments truly alone, and she realises suddenly that she has never once thanked him for all he has done for her. "You know, Asric, you  _must_ know how grateful I am for all you have done for me-"

"And you know I do not expect you to be," he assures her, his face soft and his eyes, his beautiful eyes, they are so  _warm_. "Dara, you  _know-"_

"I know," she says, letting herself curl her hand around the strong line of his jaw. "I  _know,_ Asric. I swear to you that I do."

A knock on the door startles them both, and Asric surges up, away from her, and is her silent guard once more as Septa Maegelle leads the children in. Asric shifts to stand just behind her shoulder, and it feels once more as though they are in King's Landing, under watchful eyes.

"Hello, my loves," Dara says, forcing herself to smile while holding her arms out to the children - Lyarra climbs into her lap, Bran takes what space there is left on her stool, and all that is missing is Robb sitting on the corner of her bed. "How are you liking Winterfell?"

"Uncle and Aunt are  _wonderful,_ " Lyarra says brightly, looping her arms around Dara's neck. "And cousin Arya is the same age as I am!"

Yes, little Arya, Ben's elder girl - she is so like Dara, so like  _Lya_ that Dara does not know how he can bear to look at her - is the same age as Lyarra almost to the day, and Ben's boy, a boy who is his mother's living image, he is only a year older than Bran.

 _Rickon._ Not quite Rickard, just as Dara could not bear to name her daughter  _Lyanna._  

Bran has taken to him quite as entirely as Robb ever did to Catelyn's Jasper, apparently, chattering away about this thing and that that his cousin has shown him. Lyarra, too, is busily telling Dara all manner of things about  _her_ new favourite cousin - perhaps not favourite, since she adores Stannis' eldest girl, shy little Shireen so completely - about the adventures Arya has already promised to take her on.

Dara remembers adventures with Bran, with the Bran who is lost to her, and aches for all that Lyarra and this Bran,  _her_ Bran, have to discover.

"I wish you might have known them long ago," she says impulsively, before she can stop herself. "Oh, my loves, how you would have thrived here, where you would be  _safe."_

"We are always safe, Mama," Lyarra assures her with a bright, beaming smile, "for Ser Arys and Ser Asric are always with us."

Ser Arys' chest puffs up with pride - he is a vain man, something which has never surprised Dara, not with a face so fine as his, not given all that she knows of the Reach - but Asric chokes off some sound that Dara wishes she could interpret. Is it pride, too? Or something sweeter, and more painful?

"True enough, my lovely," Dara says, dancing again on that line between truth and lie. Perhaps it was pity on Ser Barristan's part, or trust in Dara's queenly virtue and Asric's adherence to his vows despite their known history, but Asric has so often been Dara's personal guard because of the understanding shared by all those closest to them that he would always protect her, even from Robert. "Now, run along and finish preparing for tonight's feast - I will come and fetch you both when it is time for us to go down."

Lyarra kisses her cheek, Bran her hand, and then they are gone - they seem so at home here, Stark in spirit even if not in looks, and Dara is happy, so happy, that they like Winterfell. 

Robert had always been afraid of this. Of Dara's being a Stark in all but name, and the lure of the North to the children. He had brought the boys to Storm's End as often as his duties allowed, but Winterfell was always _too far,_ the road always  _unsafe,_ but Dara had always known the truth of it.

Robert had always made it clear, to her, at least, that he simply had not _wanted_ to let her bring the children to Winterfell, to see the other half of their heritage. He had always made his displeasure clear to her, shouting and bellowing furiously when she disagreed with him. Open handed slaps, too, and his massive hands holding her by both wrists so he could more easily push her face-first against the wall, so she could not avoid his cruel words.

His fists, too. Oh, Robert had used his fists on her more than once, great swooping thumps to her belly and back, to her breasts and to the back of her head, always where it would be hidden under clothes or hair. 

Asric had always raged when he saw her in the aftermath, always done his best to comfort her within the bounds of what relationship court allowed them. He had tried to convince her that he ought to stand between her and Robert, during those rages, that his duty was to her as much as to the King.

He had done just that, once. He had stepped between her and Robert's anger, when she refused to name their daughter for her sister, and taken the weight of Robert's fist to spare Dara, still abed after the difficulty of birthing Lyarra. He had carried the bruises and the broken nose like a badge of pride, and Robert had acted as though nothing had happened, as though he hadn't thrown a  _tantrum_ at not getting his way in something so small.

Well, not small. Their daughter's name is not a  _small_ thing, nothing about their children is  _small,_ but of all the decisions she and he fought over that was likely the smallest. Asric had understood, even then, before she'd been able to speak of how much the idea of naming a daughter for Lya turned her stomach, but Robert never had. 

Robert had never understood anything that stood converse to his desires. 

"Dara," Asric says, and his skin is so warm against hers - his little finger rests against her bare neck, exposed by the sweeping neckline of her gown. "Dara, you know that I am always here with you, don't you?"

She covers his hand with her own, overwhelmed as always by his devotion, by his  _kindness._ He is always with her, has been from the day Robert invested him with that accursed white cloak, and she loves him for it.

"You know I do," she says, softly, tilting her head back to meet his eyes, which are warmer even than his hand. "Asric, you  _know_ that I do."

He helps her to her feet then, as politely distant and careful as ever, but she does not want that now. Not when he is dressed in white-over-purple, the silvery white of House Dayne instead of the pearly white of the Kingsguard, with his dark hair swept back from his face and and his shirt cut low in the Dornish style, his leanly muscular arms exposed by the tight pull of that same shirt. He is so beautiful, free from the ties Robert and Lord Jon imposed on him eighteen years ago, and here, in Winterfell, where she is  _safe,_ she loves him.

She  _wants_ him.

"Your Queen would ask a favour of you, ser," she says, her voice faint. "Will you grant me one thing?"

They are a little closer than is proper, perhaps, and it is not enough. Nothing has been enough, these long years.

"Anything," Asric says, and his kiss tastes like a dream, for the few moments they allow themselves.

They cannot allow themselves more, even here. Not yet. But perhaps, someday, they will have more.


End file.
